Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of
life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net
effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking
down in record numbers.

Maybe
it's the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue
helmet, cruising along the dirt path... at three miles an hour. On his
tricycle.

Or perhaps it's today's playground,
all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used to skin their knees. And...
wait a minute... those aren't little kids playing. Their mommies—and
especially their daddies—are in there with them, coplaying or
play-by-play coaching. Few take it half-easy on the perimeter benches, as parents used to do, letting the kids figure things out for themselves.

Then
there are the sanitizing gels, with which over a third of parents now
send their kids to school, according to a recent survey. Presumably,
parents now worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their
children.

Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. Shuffling
through the sheaf of reports certifying the educational "accommodations"
he was required to make for many of his history students, he was struck
by the exhaustive, well-written—and obviously costly—one on behalf of a
girl who was already proving among the most competent of his
ninth-graders. "She's somewhat neurotic," he confides, "but she is
bright, organized and conscientious—the type who'd get to school to turn
in a paper on time, even if she were dying of stomach flu." He finally
found the disability he was to make allowances for: difficulty with
Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old "couldn't see the big picture." That
cleverly devised defect (what 13-year-old can construct the big
picture?) would allow her to take all her tests untimed, especially the
big one at the end of the rainbow, the college-worthy SAT.

Behold the wholly sanitized childhood,
without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids need to
feel badly sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor
at Tufts University. "We learn through experience and we learn through
bad experiences. Through failure we learn how to cope."

Messing
up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although
error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are
taking pains to remove failure from the equation.

"Life is
planned out for us," says Elise Kramer, a Cornell University junior.
"But we don't know what to want." As Elkind puts it, "Parents and
schools are no longer geared toward child development, they're geared to
academic achievement."

No one doubts that there are significant
economic forces pushing parents to invest so heavily in their children's
outcome from an early age. But taking all the discomfort,
disappointment and even the play out of development, especially while
increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about
180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to
forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life.
That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically
fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral
virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading
psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth. Whether we want to or not,
we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps.

The Fragility Factor

College,
it seems, is where the fragility factor is now making its greatest
mark. It's where intellectual and developmental tracks converge as the
emotional training wheels come off. By all accounts, psychological
distress is rampant on college campuses. It takes a variety of forms,
including anxiety and depression—which are increasingly regarded as two
faces of the same coin—binge drinking and substance abuse, self-mutilation
and other forms of disconnection. The mental state of students is now
so precarious for so many that, says Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard
University and former director of the National Institute of Mental
Health, "it is interfering with the core mission of the university."

The
severity of student mental health problems has been rising since 1988,
according to an annual survey of counseling center directors. Through
1996, the most common problems raised by students were relationship
issues. That is developmentally appropriate, reports Sherry Benton,
assistant director of counseling at Kansas State University. But in
1996, anxiety overtook relationship concerns and has remained the major
problem. The University of Michigan Depression Center, the nation's
first, estimates that 15 percent of college students nationwide are
suffering from that disorder alone.

Relationship problems haven't gone away; their nature
has dramatically shifted and the severity escalated. Colleges report
ever more cases of obsessive pursuit, otherwise known as stalking,
leading to violence, even death. Anorexia or bulimia in florid or
subclinical form now afflicts 40 percent of women at some time in their
college career.
Eleven weeks into a semester, reports psychologist Russ Federman, head
of counseling at the University of Virginia, "all appointment slots are
filled. But the students don't stop coming."

Drinking, too, has
changed. Once a means of social lubrication, it has acquired a darker,
more desperate nature. Campuses nationwide are reporting record
increases in binge drinking over the past decade, with students often
stuporous in class, if they get there at all. Psychologist Paul E.
Joffe, chair of the suicide prevention team
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, contends that at
bottom binge-drinking is a quest for authenticity and intensity of
experience. It gives young people something all their own to talk about,
and sharing stories about the path to passing out is a primary purpose.
It's an inverted world in which drinking to oblivion is the way to feel
connected and alive.

"There is a ritual every university administrator has come to fear," reports John Portmann, professor of religious
studies at the University of Virginia. "Every fall, parents drop off
their well-groomed freshmen and within two or three days many have
consumed a dangerous amount of alcohol and placed themselves in harm's
way. These kids have been controlled for so long, they just go crazy."

Heavy
drinking has also become the quickest and easiest way to gain
acceptance, says psychologist Bernardo J. Carducci, professor at Indiana
University Southeast and founder of its Shyness
Research Institute. "Much of collegiate social activity is centered on
alcohol consumption because it's an anxiety reducer and demands no
social skills," he says. "Plus it provides an instant identity; it lets
people know that you are willing to belong."

Welcome to the Hothouse

Talk
to a college president or administrator and you're almost certainly
bound to hear tales of the parents who call at 2 a.m. to protest
Branden's C in economics because it's going to damage his shot at grad
school.

Shortly after psychologist Robert Epstein announced to
his university students that he expected them to work hard and would
hold them to high standards, he heard from a parent—on official judicial
stationery—asking how he could dare mistreat the young. Epstein, former
editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, eventually filed a complaint with
the California commission on judicial misconduct, and the judge was
censured for abusing his office—but not before he created havoc in the
psychology department at the University of California, San Diego.

Enter:
grade inflation. When he took over as president of Harvard in July
2001, Lawrence Summers publicly ridiculed the value of honors after
discovering that 94 percent of the college's seniors were graduating
with them. Safer to lower the bar than raise the discomfort level. Grade
inflation is the institutional response to parental anxiety about
school demands on children, contends social historian Peter Stearns of
George Mason University. As such, it is a pure index of emotional
overinvestment in a child's success. And it rests on a notion of
juvenile frailty—the assumption that children are easily bruised and
need explicit uplift," Stearns argues in his book, Anxious Parenting: A History of Modern Childrearing in America.

Parental
protectionism may reach its most comic excesses in college, but it
doesn't begin there. Primary schools and high schools are arguably just
as guilty
of grade inflation. But if you're searching for someone to blame,
consider Dr. Seuss. "Parents have told their kids from day one that
there's no end to what they are capable of doing," says Virginia's
Portmann. "They read them the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go!
and create bumper stickers telling the world their child is an honor
student.

American parents today expect their children to be perfect—the
smartest, fastest, most charming people in the universe. And if they
can't get the children to prove it on their own, they'll turn to doctors
to make their kids into the people that parents want to believe their
kids are."

What they're really doing, he stresses, is "showing kids how to work the system for their own benefit."...

Parental
anxiety has its place. But the way things now stand, it's not being
applied wisely. We're paying too much attention to too few kids—and in
the end, the wrong kids. As with the girl whose parents bought her the
Gestalt-defect diagnosis, resources are being expended for kids who
don't need them.

There are kids who are worth worrying about—kids
in poverty, stresses Anderegg. "We focus so much on our own children,"
says Elkind, "It's time to begin caring about all children."

President Doug Whitlock concludes almost six years at the helm of the
public university. Whitlock’s long history with E-K-U began as a
student worker, helping with the university’s public relations.

His
first full-time position came in 1968, when he took over as director of
publications. Whitlock remembers studying the management styles
of other EKU presidents…educators like Bob Martin, J.C. Powell, and
Hanly Funderburk.

“You know they talk about filling
shoes, you know I had this feeling, Can I handle this office?, because I
knew what those guys had been through. And then, after about a week on
the job, it started sinking in on me. Hey I can do this,” said
Whitlock.

The passage of higher education reforms in the
late 1990’s brought with it an expectation of increased efficiency and
less duplication at state owned colleges and universities. There were
also promises of increased government funding.

Instead, Whitlock
watched as state support for higher education steadily declined. As
Kentucky’s colleges graduated more students and they earned larger
salaries, Whitlock believes some lawmakers saw less need for state
funding.

“It’s caused a shift in the mindset from failing
to recognize what a massive public good having a population with a high
degree of attainment is and they see it more as a private good, as an
individual good. The individual is where the benefit is being reaped,
so the mindset is ‘let the individual pay more,” added Whitlock.

The
EKU campus is still adjusting to significant restructuring. Hoping to
cut expenses, the university’s regents ordered the administration to cut
the workforce. Doug Whitlock admits it’s not something he relished, but
feels it was necessary.

“Is this something that I might have
preferred not to go through…yeah. But, it was the right thing to do
for Eastern, to get it ready for it’s next stage in its development,”
explained Whitlock.

In the end, Whitlock says the
reorganization resulted in hundreds of early retirements and voluntary
resignations, as well as eleven forced layoffs. The school also freed
up over 19-million dollars to shift into other areas. While a difficult
pill to swallow, Whitlock didn’t want to place that burden on his
replacement.

As on-line learning flourishes, some educators
predict college classrooms, as we know them now, will not exist in 20
years. Whitlock says he remains a ‘pathological optimist’ and predicts
traditional college campuses will remain.

“I think there will
always be the residential experience for the traditional age students,
but the whole nature of higher education and the distribution of
knowledge is changing profoundly,” said Whitlock.

Whitlock
sees Eastern’s role in educating the residents of central and
southeastern Kentucky as essential. He adds recent work with public
school systems and local governments on economic development should keep
EKU relevant. President Doug Whitlock retires just days before his
70th birthday. While staying in touch with higher education, Whitlock
also expects to do some traveling with his wife Joanne.

Winning strong bipartisan support for a major initiative
doesn't happen all that often in Kentucky. When it does, the matter is
of great significance.

That was the case in 2009, when Kentucky's
House and Senate — Democrats and Republicans — set the state on a
visionary course to becoming a leader in better preparing our students
to succeed in college and their careers. Since then, Kentucky's
educators, advocates, students, and community and business leaders have
been working successfully to implement and support the Kentucky Core
Academic Standards.

While the state has finished its second round
of testing on the new assessments developed to reflect the tougher
standards, the college and career preparation of our students has shown
measurable improvement, from 34 percent in 2009 to 47.2 percent in 2012.

And
yet, some people would have Kentuckians think all this has been bad
news and now, three years after the fact, are trying to politicize what
educators are teaching.

A couple of key questions: How many
opponents of the standards have actually read them? How many of them
know what a standard is?

Simply put, a standard is just a sentence
that specifies what a child should know and be able to do at the end of
a school year. In kindergarten, students are expected to be able to
count to 100 and do basic addition and subtraction. By the end of grade
12, they should be able to read and comprehend literature that can be in
the form of informational tests, history, social studies and other
areas.
The business community is no stranger to standards.
Employees must meet certain expectations of performance and quality
control to keep their jobs.

We also recognize what is good about
the Kentucky Core Academic Standards and have been vocal in our support
of them and the teachers who are making them a reality in classrooms.

■
The standards reflect what students are expected to achieve in
countries that have some of the world's highest-performing education
systems, meaning Kentuckians will be better equipped to compete in a
global economy.

■ They establish the same expectations for
academic mastery of subjects in the 40-plus states that have adopted
them. Kentucky parents will truly know how their child is doing in
comparison to their counterparts across the nation.

■
Significantly, especially in view of the misinformation that is being
spread about the standards, they are not a curriculum but a set of
common expectations for each grade. They do not dictate how teachers
teach, what materials they must use or anything else about the
classroom. That is left up to local decision-making, as it should be.

As
Conservatives for Higher Standards have noted, "The call — and need —
for raising standards is not new. President Eisenhower called for
clearer education standards in response to the Russians launching
Sputnik. President Ronald Reagan oversaw the landmark 'Nation at Risk'
report that found school standards were too low. By 2008, consensus
formed among governors and chief state school officers that raising
academic expectations was a shared imperative. The result was the
Common Core State Standards initiative." (The organization's website
includes a long list of supporters and their rationales for raising
standards: Highercorestandards.org/supporters)

The standards
were conceived by and for the states. The federal government was not
involved; the effort began long before the current administration took
office. Gov. Jim Hunt of North Carolina started the discussion in 2006,
engaging his colleagues through the National Governors Association to
partner with the Council of Chief State School Officers. Kentucky and
nearly four dozen other states were involved.

Many of the
arguments voiced by critics are based on misinformation or manipulation
of the facts. As partners in Business Leader Champions for Education and
through our individual organizations, we urge Kentuckians to reject
those arguments and join us in strongly supporting the continued efforts
and excellent work of Kentucky educators to better prepare our
students.

Kentucky cannot afford to step away from the tougher
academic standards and this opportunity to create a world-class
education system. That is what Kentucky needs to give our students the
strongest possible foundation for meeting the state's challenges and
succeeding in life and work.

Dave Adkisson is president and CEO of
the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. James R. Allen is CEO of Hilliard
Lyons and chair of Business Leader Champions for Education. Stu
Silberman is executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic
Excellence.

The petition states that after the removal of prayer from public
schools, teen pregnancy and violent crime rates spiked 500 percent,
instances of STDs increased 226 percent and SAT scores plummeted for 18
consecutive years. Taken together, the petition said, these conditions
"open[ed] the door for the AIDS epidemic and the drug culture.”

The American Family Association petition calls on Kentucky Governor
Steve Beshear (D) to enact legislation modeled after the Mississippi and
Florida laws.

“Florida and Mississippi have already put prayer (religious speech)
back into their schools!" the petition states. "Students praying again
will eventually turn our country back to God!"

In response to the petition, Rebecca Markert, an attorney for the
Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization that works to maintain
the separation of church and state, noted that the group's claims about
falling SAT scores and teen pregnancy are unsubstantiated.

"The American Family Association of Kentucky doesn't cite to any
authority backing up these statistics," said Markert in an email to The
Huffington Post. She further stated that another of the petition's
assertions -- that "prayer was in our schools for over 200 years before
the anti-God forces took it out in 1962" -- is misleading.

"In 1962 when the landmark Engel v. Vitale decision came down from
the Supreme Court, it was estimated that only half of public schools had
any religious ritual in them," said Markert.

While the United States is among the 35
richest countries in the world, it also holds the distinction of ranking
second highest in child poverty, according to a new report from
Educational Testing Service (ETS). Such poverty comes with a price —
$500 billion per year in lower earnings, less taxes paid, and other
long-term economic and educational outcomes.

The report, Poverty and Education: Finding the Way Forward (PDF),
was written by Richard J. Coley, Executive Director of the Center for
Research on Human Capital and Education at ETS, and Rutgers University
Graduate School of Education professor Bruce Baker. They provide an
overview of how poverty is measured, describe how various levels of
government attempt to address poverty through education, and review the
relationship between poverty and student outcomes. The report also
offers seven recommendations that are necessary to ensure that the
public education system prepares every student to be successful in an
increasingly competitive world.

"One aim of this report is to review the relationship between poverty
and educational and other important life outcomes and to provide a
clearer and more nuanced picture of poverty in America, as well as an
understanding of how government attempts to address poverty —
particularly from an education perspective," says Coley. "Another aim is
to consider the important issue of how poverty is officially measured
in the United States and explore several additional aspects of income
and poverty that broaden the perspective."

According to the report, 46.2 million Americans (15 percent of the population) were in poverty in 2011. Other data show:

While White Americans comprise the largest number of people in poverty, the poverty rate for Hispanics and Blacks is significantly higher.

Twenty-two percent of the nation's children are in poverty.

While 6 percent of married-couple families were poor, the poverty rate for families headed by a single female was 31 percent.

2.8 million children were in "extreme poverty," surviving on less than $2 or less per person per day in a given month.

"While education has been envisioned as the great equalizer, this
promise has been more myth than reality," adds Baker. "Not only is the
achievement gap between the poor and the non-poor twice as large as the
achievement gap between Black and White students, but tracked
differences in the cognitive performances of students in every age group
show substantial differences by income or poverty status. These
differences undoubtedly contribute to the increasing stratification of
who attends and graduates from college, limiting economic and social
mobility and serving to perpetuate the gap between rich and poor."

The report documents the negative effects of poverty on later life outcomes. For example:

Children growing up in poverty complete less schooling, work and
earn less as adults, are more likely to receive public assistance, and
have poorer health.

Boys growing up in poverty are more likely to be arrested as adults.

Girls growing up in poverty are more likely to give birth outside of marriage.

Costs associated with child poverty are estimated to total about $500 billion per year.

The challenges illustrated in the report represent systemic and
structural inequalities that are particularly challenging in the current
economic climate, Coley notes. Yet these challenges point the way
toward strategies for moderating the influence of poverty on educational
outcomes. The authors offer recommendations in seven areas that are
within the purview of education policymakers, including:

"If the governor wants to appeal to moderates across the state, he
has to get rid of (Bennett)," said Brian Peterson, a professor at
Florida International University and editor of the Miami Education Review
newsletter. "If he doesn't, the message is that the game is rigged, and
that public schools are going to be treated differently from charter
schools."

On Tuesday, Bennett said he had received "really pretty strong
support" from Scott's office...as well as members
of the state Board of Education which has the power to
hire and fire him, but its members are appointed by
the governor.

After a couple days of radio silence
about the scandal involving Florida's education commissioner, Gov. Rick
Scott finally has something to say. He told Channel 5 in West Palm
Beach that Tony Bennett is "doing a great job."

Scott praised Bennett for being "very focused on accountability" and
reiterated how well Florida's students are doing. Scott didn't say
whether Bennett's job is secure, however. See the interview here. Scott has been through several education commissioners during his tenure as governor.

Bennett has been defending himself all week against an Associated Press report that he changed the grade for a charter school in Indiana run by a prominent Republican donor. See our story here.

Bennett told reporters Tuesday that he's gotten a lot of support from
legislators and those in the governor's office. Former Gov. Jeb Bush'statement of support Tuesday. Rick Hess posted Wednesday his own interview with Bennett.
s
foundation put out a

Scott's comments to Channel 5 are similar to a statement released by his communications director, Melissa Sellers:

"Commissioner Bennett is clearly committed to making Florida’s
education system the best in the nation. He has been a leader in
increasing accountability, ensuring teachers are fairly evaluated,
securing a teacher pay raise and investing an additional one billion
dollars in education funding this year."

He really needs to get some people on his staff who can read and understand education research.

It is not that hard.

So should Rand Paul, Lamar Alexander, and the other senators who are pushing vouchers.

He would learn, for example, that students in voucher schools have not outperformed students in public schools anywhere.

He doesn’t mention that in this letter, so maybe he does know it and doesn’t care.

He would learn that voucher schools appear to have a higher graduation rate because they have a huge attrition rate.

For example, in Milwaukee, 56% of the students who started vouchers
schools in ninth grade dropped out before reaching graduation.

So, the 44% who did not drop out were more likely to have a higher
graduation rate than the public schools that accepted the dropouts from
the voucher schools.

Why do these so-called “conservatives” want to destroy their own
community’s public schools?

There is nothing conservative about that.

Conservatives protect traditional institutions.

Conservatives protect their community.

Conservatives are not anarchists.

Funny they don’t mention that vouchers have never been approved in
any referendum. Voters don’t want their public dollars to go to
religious or unregulated private schools.

McConnell writes:

We, as conservatives, know that the government is not the
best place to do a lot of things. Although, if government must take
action, we prefer that the most local level of government addresses an
issue.

Sometimes, every level of government creates obstacles to
success. I consider it a priority in the United States Senate to remove
those obstacles and help citizens, taxpayers and parents succeed.

That is why I am fighting hard for more choice and freedom in our schools.

School choice and parental control are issues I hold dear, which
is why I am proud to join my friends Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Tim Scott,
Lamar Alexander and others at an important school choice forum.

Every child, whatever their background and no matter where they
live, deserves a great education and a chance to succeed in life.
Unfortunately, Washington and the entire education establishment are
failing our kids.

Every decision that Washington has made in recent years seems to
bring more power to the federal government, leaving less control for
local schools and parents.

However, school choice is working where it has been allowed to
replace the education establishment. Here are a few facts about school
choice and the positive consequences of a successful education:In Washington, the voucher program increased the graduation rate by 21 percent.

By 25, the average high school dropout earns $18,796 per year. On
the other hand, the average college graduate with a bachelor’s degree
is earning $26,699 per year and will earn nearly 100% more over their lifetime than a high school dropout.

How do we get more young Americans to earn bachelor’s degrees instead of becoming another dropout statistic?

The answer is school choice, and I will continue to fight
alongside my colleagues in the Senate to expand the control that parents
have over their child’s education.

You can also help by making sure I can keep fighting in
Washington. Fighting for choice in education. Fighting for local control
of schools.

The emails unearthed by Tom LoBianco of the Associated Press show
that Tony Bennett was desperately trying to rig the system to raise the
grade of one charter school from a C to an A.

That charter happened to be the charter held by a major donor to GOP
campaigns, including Bennett’s, which received $130,000 from her.

As a side benefit of the new formula, the grades of all charters were raised. As this morning’s editorial in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette shows,
“The scramble to inflate Christel House’s grade also was successful in
pushing more than half of the state’s charter schools to a letter grade
of C or better, a claim Bennett couldn’t make before the formula was
massaged.”

The editorial notes with alarm that Bennett’s rigged formula is still
in place. Schools across the state will get phony grades. Will the
state board of education allow Glenda Ritz to impose some integrity to
this deeply flawed system?

“(I)t is not criterion based, it does not statistically make sense,
it does not account for standard measure of error, it is unexplainable
and difficult to understand, and it fails to comply with current law and
administrative code,” Superintendent Chris Himsel of Northwest Allen
County Schools told legislators in a letter last November.”

• Since his grading scale was part of Indiana's No Child Left Behind
Act waiver plan, did he seek approval from the U.S. Department of
Education to change how schools are graded?

• If he didn't, should he have sought permission?

• And finally, is this something the federal Education Department should look into further?
The first question is an easy one to answer. According to federal
officials, Indiana did not consult federal officials before making those
grading changes in 2012.

Answering the second question is far more complicated, and raises a
whole 'nother set of issues. According to the department, "major
changes" to a state's grading system—if those changes involve anything
in a state's NCLB waiver plan—do require an amendment, and federal
approval. Changes that are more technical in nature do not require
approval.

So, were the changes Bennett made to his grading system major, or
technical? Education Department spokesman Daren Briscoe said "it depends
on what the actual changes were. If it involved changing the point
values assigned to different levels of performance, yes—but it might
have just been a technical amendment. Generally we want states to come
to us when they're considering/making changes so we can help them decide
if it requires an amendment."

But it seems very unclear exactly what was changed, so it may be
impossible to tell at this point whether the changes were major or
technical.

As my colleague Andrew Ujifusa described over at State EdWatch:
As [the Associated Press story] points out, it's not entirely clear how
the charter school's grade ultimately leaped from a C to an A, or how
many schools were affected in the end by ex post facto changes initiated
by the department."

These grading systems are a central part of the Education
Department's NCLB law waiver plan, serving as a new, more-flexible way
to hold schools and districts accountable—since AYP has been rendered
virtually broken beyond repair. So whether the Education Department
should look into this matter further could be up for debate. The charter
school at the center of the Indiana controversy earned an A grade even
though state data shows only 34 percent of students passed the Algebra I end-of-course test.
(Is this the kind of grading system U.S. Secretary of Education
Secretary Arne Duncan wants to see?) What's more, those poor Algebra
test results don't appear to show up on the school's official accountability report card, even though the feds require all student-achievement data to be posted. (Is the federal department scrutinizing these new report cards?)

Certainly, states are experiencing growing pains as they seek to
implement their waiver plans and new grading systems. More states than
just Indiana are likely fine-tuning their formulas for judging schools.
But an open question is just how aggressive federal officials will be in
monitoring how these grading systems work.

At first glance, GOP Senators Rand Paul and Lamar Alexander might seem
like a bit of an odd couple. Although staunchly conservative, Alexander,
of Tennessee, is often, ultimately, a dealmaker (witness his recent
role in helping to broker a deal with Democrats on student loan interest
rates, which ultimately got the support of nearly every Republican in the Senate).

On the other hand, Paul, of Kentucky, is a tea party superhero with a
mixed record on compromise. Back in the fall of 2011, Paul used
procedural maneuvers to gum up the works
on a markup of bipartisan legislation to rewrite the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act. He felt that negotiators hadn't included
conservatives in their discussions of the measure. And he said the bill,
which Alexander very reluctantly supported, went too far in maintaining
the federal role in K-12.

Flash forward nearly two years, though, and it's clear Paul and
Alexander have become buddies on a K-12 issue that unites most
Republicans: school choice. And it's a political win for pretty much
everyone—maybe even some folks who oppose vouchers. (More on that
below).

Earlier this year, the two teamed up on a budget amendment
that would have allowed Title I dollars to follow students to the
school of their choice, even a private school. And more recently, Paul
cosponsored Alexander's legislation to revamp the ESEA law, which would
allow Title I money to follow students to charters and public schools,
but not private schools.

How does it help Paul? He's considered a potential
GOP presidential contender, and it's important for folks to see that he
has expertise on key "kitchen table" issues, like education. Associating
himself with Alexander, the Republicans' main man in the Senate on
K-12, is smart politics.

For his part, Alexander is giving Paul plenty of credit for his
efforts, including at a round-table discussion on choice up on Capitol
Hill today featuring District of Columbia public school activists,
parents, and students.

"Rand attracts a lot of attention wherever he goes these days, and
I'm glad he is attracting attention on charter schools and school
choice," said Alexander, who served as the U.S Secretary of Education.
"Rand has emerged as our most effective advocate for freedom for
teachers." (Remember that quote, you may see it again on the future
website of Rand Paul for America, sometime in 2016.)

And Paul isn't alone here: Other up-and-coming GOP lawmakers are
trying to grab the conservative mantle on education redesign generally,
and school choice specifically. U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the House
Majority Leader, helped push through an amendment to the House GOP's
ESEA bill that would allow Title I dollars to follow children to public schools,
including charters (an idea that Alexander and Paul had already
championed over on the Senate side). And another potential GOP 2016
contender, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, recently met with a cadre of
education groups to discuss K-12 funding issues, including Title I
portability.

How does it help Alexander? Paul is a tea party rock star, and Alexander is facing potential tea party opposition in his home state (more in this Chattanooga Times Press story).
It certainly doesn't hurt Alexander to show that Paul is happy to
associate with him on education, an issue where the senator from
Tennessee is seen as a party leader. (More here.)

How does it help the school choice movement? Who wouldn't want all this high-profile attention and new legislation?

How does it help some folks who aren't fans of school choice? Well,
in terms of getting an actual deal on an reauthorization of ESEA, it's
probably not so helpful. But, when it comes to ginning up opposition to
the GOP on K-12 education, very few policies will get Democratic
activists (particularly teachers' unions) more riled up than vouchers.

But this is very odd because by almost every measure, Kentucky is more successful in education than Tennessee.

Unlike Tennessee, Kentucky has no charter schools. It does not aspire
to enact vouchers. It is doing none of what the corporate reformers
love.

And yet, having not followed the reform path to privatization, this is what Kentucky does have:

– Higher scores on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) than Tennessee in seven out of eight categories.– A higher ACT composite average than Tennessee– A larger percentage of its population with 4-year college degrees than Tennessee– A lower unemployment rate than Tennessee

Please ask Senator Rand Paul why Kentucky should copy Tennessee.

Plain logic suggests that Tennessee should strive to be like Kentucky.

Monday, July 29, 2013

One of Jeb! Bush's most prominent "Chiefs For Change," Tony Bennett got drummed out of Indiana last year when he lost reelection for state superintendent of education. No matter: Jeb! pulled a few strings and got him his current gig doing the same job in Florida, where he has presided over one disaster after another.
As Bob Sikes points out, Bennett's role as the "fiscal agent" for the Common Core test consortium known as PARCC actually followed him from Indiana to Florida, compromising his role as an objective evaluator of the testing regime. So between his own conflicts of interest, the conservative backlash against the Common Core in Florida, and the growing distrust over Florida's "statistically invalid" school grading system, the last thing Bennett needs is another scandal.
Well, as they used to say over at Warner Brothers: cue the anvil. - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/07/tony-bennett-grade-fixer.html#sthash.vtbSa8jL.dpuf doing the same job in Florida, where
he has presided over one disaster after another.

As Bob Sikes
points out, Bennett's role as the "fiscal agent" for the Common Core
test consortium known as PARCC actually followed him from Indiana to
Florida, compromising his role as an objective evaluator of the testing
regime. So between his own conflicts of interest, the conservative backlash against the Common Core in Florida, and the growing distrust over Florida's "statistically invalid" school grading system, the last thing Bennett needs is another scandal.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker is one of the most prominent national Democrats to embrace private school vouchers. He's teamed up
with his chief Garden State political rival, GOP Gov. Chris Christie,
to help birth a new Newark teacher contract that includes merit-pay. And
for good measure, he persuaded Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook fame, to donate an astonishing $100 million to the long-struggling Newark City Schools.

Now Booker is likely to be the next U.S. Senator from New Jersey. Booker has a commanding lead in the August 13 Democratic primary against U.S. Reps. Rush Holt and Frank Pallone. And he appears likely to trounce his GOP opponent in the special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat.

Years ago, Booker was one of the galvanizing forces in bringing
together a cadre of high-powered, deep-pocketed Wall Street donors with
an interested in education policy, who worked together to support his
early races for city council and mayor. The group eventually became
Democrats for Education Reform, which is today is the signature
Political Action Committee for lefty politicians who are fans of
less-than-traditional lefty policies, like charters and performance pay.
(Early Edweek look at DFER and a more recent take here.)

"They knew each other before, but they got involved in politics
together to support Cory Booker," said Joe Williams, the executive
director of the group.

And now Booker is almost a kind of mascot for the group they formed.
He was part of an event Williams described as its "coming-out party" at
the Democratic convention in 2008. And today you can find Booker front and center on the organization's website, in a video talking about what it means to be a DFER.

The Political Action Committee, of course, continues to love him
right back. In fact, the organization has poured some quarter-million
dollars into Booker's Senate campaign, Williams estimates.

It's an investment, Williams says, in a candidate who would likely
have an outsized influence on education policy in the U.S. Senate.

Williams described Booker as a prodigious fundraiser, and said, "the
rest of the Senate will come to rely on his ability to help them raise
money for their campaigns. That alone will raise the stature of the
issues he supports, including education reform. I think it would make it
mainstream."

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate education
committee, has said he'd like to bring a Democrats-only bill to
reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act to the floor this year. If
Booker wins his race, as expected, he could be in place in time to vote
on the legislation.

Williams sees Booker teaming up with other prominent Democrats,
including Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado—the former superintendent of
Denver public schools and the administration's go-to-guy on K-12
policy—as well as Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Mark Warner of
Virginia.

"The Senate is becoming a place where discussions of education reform
have actually gotten interesting," Williams added. "I think if you add
one person into the mix, especially someone as persuasive as Cory
Booker, it could be quite powerful for education reform."

"I do think the NJEA sees a difference among the candidates," he
said. "I wish they were working to advance their interests more fully
rather than sitting back and waiting for the results come what may."

As for DFER, Williams is disappointed that the organization had to choose between two Garden State politicians it really likes.

"Our folks [are] big fans of Rush Holt," he said. "My challenge is to go back and make him feel loved in the House."...

The impact of the across-the-board federal spending cuts on
Kentucky programs ranging from special education to social work is
expected to be more devastating next year than this year, state
education and human resources officials warned lawmakers Thursday.

They said the federal cuts, known as sequestration, will mean
tough decisions for state legislators as they craft the state's next
two-year budget in Kentucky's 2014 General Assembly that begins in
January. The budget depends on state and federal tax dollars.

Education Commissioner Terry Holliday told members of the state
legislature's budget committees that the federal cuts to education this
state fiscal year that began July 1 will amount to about $26 million.

Meanwhile, Beth Jurek, budget chief for the state Cabinet for
Health and Family Services, said the cuts to the cabinet amount to about
$8.2 million in fiscal year 2013 and between $17.7 million and $18.4
million the following year.

Hiren Desai, the education department's associate commissioner for
administration and support, said the impact of the cuts will be worse
next year, particularly on school staffing, as school districts struggle
with dwindling federal funds.

He predicted that "a perfect storm" will develop early next year
when the public realizes the impact of the federal cuts and state
lawmakers have to produce a balanced budget.

Jurek said the health cabinet that provides a number of social
service programs had built into its budget this year cuts of about 8.4
percent but the sequestrations reductions actually are about 5 percent.

"It's not as bad as we initially thought but it's still bad and could get worse in the future," she said.

The education officials and Jurek outlined the impact of the cuts on several state programs.

For example, Title I federal dollars that help fund primary and
secondary education will drop by $10.4 million, from $221 million to
$210.6 million.

That means fewer student services will produce more students at
risk of becoming academically unsuccessful, said Charles Harman,
director of the education department's budget and financial management
division.

Federal dollars for special education in Kentucky will dip about
$8 million, he said, meaning fewer instructional staff such as
occupational therapists and speech therapists who often work directly
with individual students.

Teachers also may have to travel further to attend training, since
federal dollars for Improving Teacher Quality will dip by $813,000, he
said.

Also, an educational program to provide "supplemental enrichment"
to students in literacy, math, science, technology, arts, nutrition and
health education will drop by $1.4 million.

Jurek said the cuts to the health cabinet include $1 million to
substance abuse prevention and treatment grants, $268,287 to community
mental health service, nearly $9 million for low income energy
assistance, about $2 million for support for social workers and $1.1
million to help old people.

Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, said he was "outraged" by the
cuts. Rep. Bob Damron, D-Nicholasville, said Americans "need to know
what these guys in Washington are doing."

Rep. Reginald Meeks, D-Louisville, asked Education Commissioner
Holliday if he has contacted Kentucky's congressional delegation about
the "harm of sequestration to Kentucky."

Holliday said he has, and each political party blames the other for the cuts.

The total sequestration cuts for the nation amount to about $85.4
billion, or about 2.4 percent of the $3.6 trillion federal budget for
this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The cuts are split evenly by dollar amounts between the defense
and non-defense programs. Some major programs like Social Security,
Medicaid, federal pensions and veterans' benefits are exempt.

State Rep. John Will Stacy, D-West Liberty, said he is concerned
that no one knows how long sequestration will last. "We could have a
real crisis in two to three years," he said.

Critics of new science standards for Kentucky’s public schools made a
spectacularly persuasive argument in favor of them last week at a
hearing in Frankfort — although it wasn’t their intent and it’s unlikely
they realize it.

The comments by some
opponents at the hearing were worse than ill-informed. They were
outright alarming and made the most compelling case yet that sound, fact-based public education of future generations is the only way for Kentucky to combat ignorance and unfounded fear.

At
issue are a set of basic standards for schools to use to design a more
sound and rigorous science curriculum meant to better prepare students
for college and careers. They were developed over two years by a
consortium of 25 states with input from scientists and educators across
the nation.

Known
as the Next Generation Science Standards, they have been adopted by the
state Board of Education and endorsed as critical to public education by
such prominent educators as Lee Todd, an engineer, scientist and the
former president of the University of Kentucky.

They
stem from a Republican-led state law in 2009 designed to upgrade
Kentucky’s education standards and to try to pull the state out of the
dark ages, education-wise.

But
comments from a small but noisy band of opponents suggest Kentucky’s
got a ways to go when it comes to science education, according to the account of the hearing by
The Courier-Journal’s Mike Wynn. About the only things missing from
Tuesday’s hearing held by the state Education Department were the
torches and pitchforks.

Opponents
called the science standards “fascist,” compared them to Soviet-style
communism, repeated the totally-discredited and completely false claim
that the voluntary standards are a “federal takeover” of education and
even suggested better science standards promote a socialistic view with
dire consequences.

“We are even talking genocide and murder here, folks,” a Louisville woman claimed at the hearing.

A Baptist pastor chimed in with one of the main objections of
opponents — that the science standards include evolution, the
science-based explanation for the origins of life but not creationism,
the religious belief God created the world.

“Outsiders
are telling public school families that we must follow the rich man’s
elitist religion of evolution, that we no longer have the right to
worship almighty God,” he said, offering the wholly unsupported claim
that teaching evolution has led to drug abuse, suicide and other social
ills.

(Climate
change deniers also hate the science standards because they recommend
students consider the impact of humans on climate).

Fortunately,
there also were some more rational comments at the hearing, largely
scientists, educators and others who echoed the recent comments of Dr.
Todd in calling for more rigorous science-based education to help
Kentucky students compete in the world.

Daniel
Phelps, an environmental geologist, noted, “unlike many of the people
who commented” he had “actually read” the standards and said they
contain none of the menacing features cited by opponents.

GOP donor's school grade changed

Former Indiana and current
Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising
to hold "failing" schools accountable. But when it appeared an
Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might
receive a poor grade, Bennett's education team frantically overhauled
his signature "A-F" school grading system to improve the school's marks.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show
Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor
Christel DeHaan's school received an "A," despite poor test scores in
algebra that initially earned it a "C."

"They need to understand that anything less than an
A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work,"
Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12 email to then-chief of staff Heather Neal,
who is now Gov. Mike Pence's chief lobbyist.

The emails, which also show Bennett discussed with
staff the legality of changing just DeHaan's grade, raise unsettling
questions about the validity of a grading system that has broad
implications. Indiana uses the A-F grades to determine which schools get
taken over by the state and whether students seeking state-funded
vouchers to attend private school need to first spend a year in public
school. They also help determine how much state funding schools receive.

A low grade also can detract from a neighborhood and drive homebuyers elsewhere.

Bennett, who now is reworking Florida's grading
system as that state's education commissioner, reviewed the emails
Monday morning and denied that DeHaan's school received special
treatment. He said discovering that the charter would receive a low
grade raised broader concerns with grades for other "combined" schools -
those that included multiple grade levels - across the state.

"There was not a secret about this," he said. "This
wasn't just to give Christel House an A. It was to make sure the system
was right to make sure the system was face valid."

However, the emails clearly show Bennett's staff
was intensely focused on Christel House, whose founder has given more
than $2.8 million to Republicans since 1998, including $130,000 to
Bennett and thousands more to state legislative leaders.

Other schools saw their grades change, but the emails show DeHaan's charter was the catalyst for any changes.

Bennett rocketed to prominence with the help of
former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and a
national network of Republican leaders and donors, such as DeHaan.
Bennett is a co-founder of Bush's Chiefs for Change, a group consisting
mostly of Republican state school superintendents pushing school
vouchers, teacher merit pay and many other policies enacted by Bennett
in Indiana.

Though Indiana had had a school ranking system
since 1999, Bennett switched to the A-F system and made it a signature
item of his education agenda, raising the stakes for schools statewide.

Bennett consistently cited Christel House as a
top-performing school as he secured support for the measure from
business groups and lawmakers, including House Speaker Brian Bosma and
Senate President Pro Tem David Long.

But trouble loomed when Indiana's then-grading
director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the
Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.

"This will be a HUGE problem for us," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012 email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, "Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved."

By Sept. 13, Gubera unveiled it was a 2.9, or a "C."

A weeklong behind-the-scenes scramble ensued among
Bennett, assistant superintendent Dale Chu, Gubera, Neal and other top
staff at the Indiana Department of Education. They examined ways to lift
Christel House from a "C'' to an "A," including adjusting the
presentation of color charts to make a high "B'' look like an "A'' and
changing the grade just for Christel House.

It's not clear from the emails exactly how Gubera changed the grading formula, but they do show DeHaan's grade jumping twice.

"That's like parting the Red Sea to get numbers to
move that significantly," Jeff Butts, superintendent of Wayne Township
schools in Indianapolis, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

DeHaan, who opened the Christel House Academy
charter school in Indianapolis in 2002 and has since opened schools in
India, Mexico and South Africa, said in a statement Monday that no one
from the school ever made any requests that would affect Christel
House's grades.

Ritz, a Democrat, defeated Bennett in November with
a grass-roots campaign driven by teachers angered by Bennett's
education agenda.

Bennett said Monday he felt no special pressure to
deliver an "A'' for DeHaan. Instead, he argued, if he had paid more
attention to politics he would have won re-election in Indiana.

Yet Bennett wrote to staff twice in four days,
directly inquiring about DeHaan's status. Gubera broke the news after
the second note that "terrible" 10th grade algebra results had "dragged
down their entire school."

Bennett called the situation "very frustrating and disappointing" in an email that day.

"I am more than a little miffed about this,"
Bennett wrote. "I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and
not excuses and/or explanations for me to wiggle myself out of the
repeated lies I have told over the past six months."

Bennett said Monday that email expressed his
frustration at having assured top-performing schools like DeHaan's would
be recognized in the grading system, but coming away with a flawed
formula that would undo his promises.

When requested a status update Sept. 14, his staff
alerted him that the new school grade, a 3.50, was painfully close to an
"A." Then-deputy chief of staff Marcie Brown wrote that the state might
not be able to "legally" change the cutoff for an "A."

"We can revise the rule," Bennett responded.

Over the next week, his top staff worked arduously
to get Christel House its "A." By Sept. 21, Christel House had jumped to
a 3.75. Gubera resigned shortly afterward.

He declined comment Monday.

The emails don't detail what Gubera changed in the
school formula or how many schools were affected. Indiana education
experts consulted for this article said they weren't aware the formula
had been changed.

Kentucky high school seniors will soon be able to send electronic
transcripts to Kentucky colleges and universities, as well as some out
of state schools, using
the free Kentucky eTranscript process, Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson said
today.

“The
statewide adoption of electronic transcripts will streamline the
college admissions process, in some cases allowing students to complete
the process totally online,” said
Abramson. “The eTranscript system will be easy for our students to use,
and it will reduce costs and save time for all parties.”

Jefferson
County will be the first to make the system available districtwide. By
the end of the year, Kentucky eTranscript should be available to
students in public and private
high schools across the state, as school districts are phased in and go
live with the system.

Kentucky’s
eTranscript is provided free to high school students, school districts,
colleges and universities by the Council on Postsecondary Education
(CPE), the Kentucky Department
of Education (KDE) and the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance
Authority (KHEAA) which collaborated on the project. There is a nominal
charge for students to send transcripts to non-participating colleges or
universities.

“High
school counselors and students will benefit by having a simplified
request and delivery system available 24/7,” said Tommy Floyd, KDE’s
chief of staff.

They’ll
also be able to upload documents such as letters of recommendation for
paperless delivery and track the entire transmission process, he said.

Transcripts and other materials are delivered in a PDF format to colleges and universities through a secure online portal.

“Colleges
and universities will benefit by having one transcript format, less
mail to process, and the potential to directly import transcript data
into their student information
systems,” said Thompson.

“This
has truly been a collaborative effort that will benefit the students of
Kentucky,” said Carl Rollins, executive director of the Kentucky Higher
Education Assistance Authority.
“Hopefully it will make the entire college admissions process easier
and encourage more students to seek a postsecondary education whether
that be at a two-year or four-year institution.”

The
three state agencies worked with two private firms, Parchment and
Infinite Campus, on the project. Parchment is the leader in eTranscript
exchange in the U.S. and Infinite
Campus is the largest American-owned student information system.

A list of participating colleges and universities is available
here.
An example of an eTranscript can be found here.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

New Report from Center on Education Policy findsConcern is high, however, about funding and support for Common Core implementation

This from the Center on Education Policy:

Education officials in a majority of states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards say it is unlikely that their state will reverse, limit, or change its decision to adopt the standards this year or next, a new report finds. The data, which come from a recent survey, also found that very few of the state leaders said that overcoming resistance to the standards posed a major challenge in their state.

“What we found is that, while there might be resistance to the Common Core, it isn’t coming from state education agencies,” said CEP’s Executive Director Maria Ferguson. “State leaders are more focused on finding resources and guidance to carry out the demanding steps required for full implementation.” Most of the 40 states that responded to the CEP survey also indicated support for particular legislative changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that would directly assist state and district efforts to transition to the CCSS.

The Administration has been criticized by some for being too involved in or heavy-handed in its encouragement of the state-initiated and state-led standards through federal initiatives like Race to the Top and the No Child Left Behind waivers. But only two states in the CEP survey reported that they did not want any federal assistance with CCSS implementation. Thirty states or more responded that their efforts to transition to the new standards would be helped by changes to ESEA, accompanied by funding, for activities such as state and local implementation activities around the Common Core, CCSS-related professional development for teachers and principals, and implementing the soon-to-be released assessments aligned to the CCSS.

“It is pretty clear that state leaders see the federal government as having a role to play in Common Core implementation. Exactly what that role is and how that support is structured moving forward will represent a key decision point for both the Common Core and any future ESEA reauthorization,” said Ferguson.

The CEP study found that 30 states favored legislative revisions to the Title I of ESEA—which supports education services for low-performing students in high-poverty schools—to help teachers in Title I schools teach CCSS content. Additionally, 29 states expressed support for revisions to Title III—which funds instructional services for English language learners—to help teachers of ELL students teach the content of the new standards.

“With many states still recovering from the recession, state leaders may view the federal dollars associated with the legislative changes as a means to provide them with needed funds to implement the Common Core,” said CEP’s Deputy Director Diane Stark Rentner.

The report can be accessed free of charge at www.cep-dc.org.

Key FindingsSeveral key findings from the survey shed light on states’ views about the role of the federal government in assisting them with transitioning to the CCSS.

• In the vast majority (37) of the CCSS-adopting states participating in the survey, officials considered it unlikely that their state would reverse, limit, or change its decision to adopt the standards during 2013-14. In addition, very few respondents said that overcoming various types of resistance to the Common Core posed a major challenge in their state; at the time of the survey in spring 2013, most respondents viewed this as a minor challenge or no challenge.• A majority of CCSS-adopting states indicated support for particular legislative changes to the ESEA that would directly assist state and district efforts to transition to the Common Core.• Only two survey states reported that they did not want any federal assistance with CCSS implementation.• The Obama Administration’s waivers of ESEA/No Child Left Behind Act provisions appear to have helped some states with their efforts to transition to the CCSS and meet federal accountability requirements.• If ESEA is not reauthorized during the 113th Congress, many states that received waivers see the need for additional non-legislative actions on ESEA to help them implement the CCSS.

When NGA and CCSSO kicked off the CCSS Initiative, it was, by intention, a state-instigated, state-led activity that would produce national, not federal, standards. The Initiative continues to emphasize that “the federal government had no role in the development of the Common Core State Standards and will not have a role in their implementation” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, n.d.). In the three years since the standards were released, this state/national focus has aided the adoption of the standards by many states that would have been opposed to adopting any federal education standards. The only direct federal funding provided for the CCSS was $437.5 million in economic stimulus money to support the development of assessments aligned to the CCSS.1

The Obama Administration, however, has encouraged the adoption of college- and career-ready standards in other ways. States applying for Race to the Top funds must adopt “internationally benchmarked standards and assessments.” In addition, states seeking a waiver of key provisions of ESEA as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) must adopt “college- and career-ready standards” and “aligned, high-quality assessments” (U.S. Department of Education, 2009; 2012). While states could meet the requirements of either program by adopting the CCSS, both programs stop short of actually requiring states to do so. States could fulfill these requirements by adopting other sets of internationally benchmarked or college- and career-ready standards that meet program criteria. In fact, two states approved for waivers did use alternative standards: Virginia, which did not adopt the CCSS in either subject, and Minnesota, which did not adopt the CCSS in math.

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KSN&C is intended to be a place for well-reasoned civil discourse...not to suggest that we don’t appreciate the witty retort or pithy observation. Have at it. But we do not invite the anonymous flaming too often found in social media these days. This is a destination for folks to state your name and speak your piece.

It is important to note that, while the Moderator serves as Faculty Regent for Eastern Kentucky University, all comments offered by the Moderator on KSN&C are his own opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of the Board of Regents, the university administration, faculty, or any members of the university community.

On KSN&C, all authors are responsible for their own comments. See full disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

Why This Blog?

So far as we know, we only get one lifetime. So, when I "retired" in 2004, after 31-years in public education I wanted to do something different. I wanted to teach, write and become a student again. I have since spent a decade in higher ed.

I have listened to so many commentaries over the years about what should be done to improve Kentucky's schools - written largely by folks who have never tried to manage a classroom, run a school, or close an achievement gap. I came to believe that I might have something to offer.

I moved, in 1985, from suburban northern Kentucky to what was then the state’s flagship district - Fayette County. I have had a unique set of experiences to accompany my journey through KERA’s implementation. I have seen children grow to graduate and lead successful lives. I have seen them go to jail and I have seen them die. I have been amazed by brilliant teachers, dismayed by impassive bureaucrats, disappointed by politicians and uplifted by some of Kentucky’s finest school children. When I am not complaining about it, I will attest that public school administration is critically important work.

Democracy is run by those who show up. In our system of government every citizen has a voice, but only if they choose to use it.

This blog is totally independent; not supported or sponsored by any institution or political organization. I will make every effort to fully cite (or link to) my sources. Please address any concerns to the author.

On the campaign trail...with my wife Rita

An action shot: The Principal...as a much younger man.

Faculty Senate Chair

Serving as Mace Bearer during the Inauguration of Michael T. Benson as EKU's 12th president.

Teaching

EDF 203 in EKU's one-room schoolhouse.

Professin'

Lecturing on the history of Berea College to Berea faculty and staff, 2014.

Faculty Regent

One in a long series of meetings. 2016

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